On 9/29/02 4:09 AM, in article , "Jim
Webster" wrote:

They plough to follow contours in the MidWest (USA) , don't they?

I've taken the liberty of x posting this to sci agric as Gordon will be
able to answer this.


--
Jim Webster

"The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind"

'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami'


Traditional plowing is pretty much a thing of the past in Nebraska. I
don't know about Gordon's area in Oklahoma. Plowing is too slow for modern
farmers. It also leads to a lot more soil erosion than current practices.
U.S. farm programs require a certain amount of organic matter be left on the
surface. Farmers use discs, field cultivators, and chisel plows nowadays. A
good number use minimum or no till.
Some farmers still use plows to maintain terraces. They would follow the
terraces in the past. I saw one farmer plowing last summer. It's been
probably 20 years since I've seen a farmer plowing before that.
A farmer with a regular plow would divide the field in sections and plow
the field in strips. The place where the headlands met was called a dead
furrow. A very few farmers had rollover plows. They would start on one side
of the field and work their way across.

Dean